103 Roots Beyond Roles: Who Are You When the Titles Fall Away?

Who are you when the roles shift?

In midlife, so many of us feel the ground move beneath us. Children grow, parents age, careers evolve, bodies change. And suddenly, the roles we’ve been living inside: mother, partner, achiever, caregiver, don’t define us in the same way.

This episode is an invitation to explore what lies beneath those shifting identities.

I share personal stories of how my relationship with my daughter has changed as she grows into young adulthood, and how burnout challenged the way I’d tied my worth to work. Both moments invited me to reconnect with my values, the deeper roots beneath the surface.

We’ll explore:

- Why midlife so often stirs questions of identity

- How survival roles shape us and what happens when they no longer fit

- What values can offer when roles shift or fall away

- How to re-anchor yourself in presence during transitions

You're not losing yourself, you're remembering that your roots run deeper than your titles.

If you’re navigating menopause, empty nesting, caregiving, or just that inner sense of change, this one’s for you.

Ready for deeper support as you navigate this season? 

Book a free clarity call at carlykillen.com.

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

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🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

Carly: 0:46

Welcome back to Rooted In Presence. I'm your host, Carly Killen, and I'm so glad you're here. This week I want to talk to you about a wellness event that I attended recently, and I noticed some themes that were quietly running beneath so many conversations. This wellness event was an opportunity to bring my new studio still space home out into the world. And I also spent some time delivering a beautiful breath work, just 10 minutes, an opportunity to take some time out of the day. It was incredible how powerful it was, but it did bring up some interesting conversations. And the questions, who am I really? When the roles I've been carrying start to shift, I was met by a number of women who noticed their roles have changed, some of their titles had fallen away, and I think this is a question that comes up so often in midlife. For so many years, our identities are entwined with the hats that we wear. Mother, partner, daughter, caregiver, professional achiever, nurturer. These roles give us structure. They give us purpose, and in many cases they've helped us survive. But there's something important here to recognize these roles change children grow up, parents age. Careers evolve and sometimes end relationships shift. Bodies change, and so they should. And when there's outer roles, no longer define us in the same way. It can leave us wondering what's left, who am I if I'm not these roles? It can feel unsettling, but it can also be the beginning of something truly beautiful. So if you resonate with anything that I've just said so far, perhaps you're navigating your own role change. Keep listening. You're in the right place. So let's first explore the survival roles we carry. Many of us grew up carrying what I call the good girl role. That's something I relate to a lot, We are often told, be agreeable, be polite. Don't rock the votes, or perhaps you resonate with the achiever. Your worth is tied up in your grades, your career, your productivity, your certificates, or perhaps you resonate more with the caretaker. Always putting others' needs before your own. Maybe you were a peacemaker, constantly smoothing things over, keeping the peace even at your own expense, or perhaps these are all a number of roles rolled into one. As many women, including myself, can relate to all of these and perhaps more, and these roles weren't random. They have helped us to adapt, helped us to belong to avoid conflict. So for some of us, they were part of our survival earlier on in life. But as we grow older, as we navigate more of our life and we hit midlife, that scaffolding of those roles starts to shake. And sometimes in very much the most personal of ways. And for me, one of those shifts has been certainly through motherhood. My daughter has her own place now. She is stepping into young adulthood and our relationship is changing. I'm still her Mum. It always will be. But it looks a lot different to how it did growing up. It's less about being directly responsible for every detail and more about watching her bloom in her own way, still being here as her support, but also having the joy of spending time together as two adults. It's such a beautiful transition, but it also made me pause, like if I'm not mom in the same daily hands-on sense, then who am I and who was I? Then. Another moments has also come through my professional life. For many years, my identity was so tightly bound off with my work, my role as a dietician, as a coach, as someone doing, and always achieving. And once I hit burnout, I was forced to slow down. And that slowing down was terrifying because if I wasn't achieving at the same pace. If I wasn't constantly striving for the next thing improving, then who was I? It felt really scary to stay in the stillness and well risk finding out, and these two shifts, motherhood, that changing shape of career, especially with it no longer being tied to my worth, I had to learn to step aside from that. It brought me face to face with. The truth that roles while important, are not the whole of who we are. So this is where values come in. If roles are like our branches changing with the seasons and values are the roots beneath the soil, well that's one way of looking at it anyway. When those branches feel bare. When those roles have given us everything that we need, we've taken all that's is helpful for us. They can fall away, but when that happens, the roots that still remain, they don't go anywhere. So for me, having to slow down in burnout meant I had to revisit my values. What really matters to me? And where do these values come from? Which ones are truly mine, and not just borrow from culture, family, or old survival scripts. Questions like these help us reconnect with what's ready, with what's steady beneath the surface, our truth, our presence, our compassion and creativity. For me, this all adds up to our freedom, and this is the roots that hold us steady, even when our visible roles are shifting. So let's talk about what happens in midlife and how our perception might change. Now, often we're told that midlife is painted very much like a crisis, but for me, I see it much more as a threshold. A threshold where we are invited to pause, to reflect, to reevaluate what do I want for this next chapter? And yes, it can feel very much like being uprooted. As I mentioned in our last episode, it can feel very wobbly, unfamiliar, but this space is also highly fertile because from that place, we get to ask, if I'm not defined by my roles, who am I and what do I want to root into next? So if you are here, perhaps navigating menopause career shifts, caregiving, empty nesting, or even just that inner sense of change, just allow this to be your reminder. You are more than the roles you've played. Your roots go deeper than your titles. And the beauty of being rooted in presence is that you don't need all the answers at once. Roots grow slowly. They take their time and so can you. So this week I invite you to reflect on which roles are you ready to loosen your grip on, and what values do you want to roots deeper into as you move forward. So that's it for this week. Just a short one to give you a few things to wonder about. And if this conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to me via my website, carly killin.com, whether that's to give me feedback on the episode or if you'd like more support as you navigate your midlife threshold, you can book a free clarity call there too. So until next time, may you meet yourself with Compassion Walk With Presence. And remember, you already carry everything you need.